Seeking Counsel

I'm finally getting around to writing about seeking counseling for depression and anger, after talking about it in the com box for a while. Regular commenters know that I have sought Biblical counseling because I realized gradually that I have been giving in to depression and anger for a long time. I'll talk later about the nature of the counseling. For now I just want to give some background.

I began to realize that I needed to do this because, first, I saw that my anger was getting out of hand in my home, with my husband and children. I didn't understand at first why it was getting worse, though it had been a problem for a while. It pretty much started with reacting to my husband's anger that showed itself in lots of outbursts of rage early in our marriage, verbal rather than physical; yet he had improved much because he had realized after a few years that he had a problem, which was caused by circumstances in his childhood, and which was passed down from earlier generations. With God's help, Eddie gradually and drastically reduced the outbursts.

Yet, I had never dealt with the effects of his anger, so it was coming out in me in the form of constant irritation and impatience and my own increasing outbursts of anger. I didn't really understand why this was happening. Another factor was lifelong depression, which I actually thought was not a problem anymore. I didn't 'feel' depressed most of the time; didn't have the 'black pit' feeling in my middle and the sinking feeling that depression gave me as a teen and young adult.

The low-level depression was probably also a factor in the constant irritability. A few months ago I read that irritability is a symptom of depression in some people, and this added to my understanding that I had issues that needed counseling. Another thing I read told me that women at my age can have pre-menopausal hormone fluctuations that can make us likely to have outbursts of anger that then lead to guilt and depression as well. It's like a vicious cycle where one thing feeds the other and you can spiral into deeper anger and depression.

All this so far I figured out on my own as I went along. The rest of what I need to talk about will deal with the counseling method and with my progress and thoughts, which I will write about soon. If anyone has any insights or personal testimonies to share, please feel free to do that.